A place for everything and everything in it’s place: creating an environment for learning

I have a routine: table by the window, the one with the plug next to it, coffee on the right side of the table at the back, phone on the left. This is the best table as it has a view, but is also wedged in the corner, feeling most comfortable. I see other people stake out their spaces too: the girl across from me works on her laptop on photoshop, needing a mouse, she has a bigger table. We are both creatures of routine.

We organise our environment to optimise our work, but today, many of those resources and communities are online. Do we support new learners enough?

Of course, the environment is important, but not just the physical environment. Just as we arrange our in-trays, our pen pots and space for biscuits, so too we organise access to resources, to our social learning communities, to our support teams, our mentors and coaches and more formal resources like libraries and offices, photocopiers and HR departments. Whatever we do, whether cooking in our kitchen or mending the car in the garage, we curate our environment to suit the tasks, to ensure that everything is in reach, everything is in it’s place.

As technology gives us greater access access to our resources, to our communities, to our networks and tools, so our relationship with our learning environment changes. Instead of arranging the physical elements, it becomes more a case of carrying these communities and resources with us.

I no longer have to carry tapes, mini disks or CDs with me: all my music is in the Cloud. Similarly, all my connections are online. I know where to turn to for support with editing, with video, with technology, with ideas. My communities travel with me.

Physical environment for learning is still important, but good WiFi and a comfortable space to type more so. It may be that we need to provide greater support around this at induction: helping people to shape their support communities, even supporting them by paying for membership of professional spaces instead of buying bigger desks or a new coffee machine. After all, in the Social Age, i’m more likely to be working in the coffee shop anyway, so community is more important than coffee.

How much of your environment is in place, how much do you need to work on? Do you have all your communities around you? How should this impact on our learning design for new programmes? How much value is there is physical assets as opposed to online resources?

The world of learning is changing faster than ever: we need everything in it’s place, but that place may not be on your desk.

Navigating the space between process and excellence. Is your organisation agile enough?

How will you fill the gap between process and excellence?

Process will get you so far: it will get you precisely too the edge of the abyss. I’m increasingly interested in the disconnect between formal, abstract, ‘knowledge age’ training and the requirements of the dynamically connected and agile Social Age. Where performance is what matters, our approach to learning design and delivery, our view of learning, need fluidity. It’s not one size fits all for five years, it’s about dynamically created solutions custom fit to the needs of individuals. It’s about engagement to get me interested and performance support to let me work better, work smarter. It’s about delivering change rather than being swept along by it.

Command and control are no longer valid: as the divide between formal and informal spaces breaks down, as social and formal coexist and individuals take increasing responsibility for curating their artisan skills, it’s facilitation, generosity and narration that count. Who can share best, who can tell their story and co-create meaning? Who can be agile and use that agility to innovate, to not only stay ahead of the curve but to decide where to draw it.

As Nigel said in our workshop last month: what power do you have? Everyone has power, it’s how you choose to wield it that counts.

Process is about foundations and structure, excellence is about experience and caring. Excellence is about storytelling and honesty. It’s about being unafraid and proud of your achievements, but being humble enough to be a continuous learner. To accept that when we stop learning, we resort to process, we lose agility. It’s not how capable i am today that counts so much as how capable i can be tomorrow and how the organisation can support this performance gain. Through provision and belief in social learning spaces to surround and embrace the formal ones, and through technical tools that suit my needs, not technology to control and restrict me.

These articles may be relevant if you’re interested in these areas:

1. This piece explores the nature of work in the Social Age
2. This one looks at how performance improvement is iterative, supported by technology and social learning
3. This one explores agility

And these are the questions that the organisation should be asking itself:

Questions to ask within the organisation to determine how you are bridging the gap between process and excellence

Building a rocket to fly to the moon: are your learning blueprints complete?

Commander Hadfield is the archetypal Social Age hero: rugged but personable commander of the International Space Station, cult hero on Twitter and lead musician in the first ever terrestrial/orbital concert performance. Which, naturally, makes me want to build a rocket and give it a go myself. Let’s face it, rockets are cool, plus it’s been done before so it can’t be that hard. Clearly i will need some materials, maybe a book on ‘how to build a rocket‘ and perhaps access to some online resources (i’m sure there are a good number of other amateur rocketeers out there). Oh, and a set of blueprints. Plus perhaps access to some coaches and mentors, people who’ve done it before, to form a support community.

Are your blueprints up to date for all your learning? Or are you working off old plans?

Sounds good? Well, it will be if the blueprints are right. Access to resources is one thing, being able to buy the right materials, having the community surrounding me to provide challenge and support, all of these things are important, but if the blueprints are out of date, i’m never going to get in the air or, worse, i’ll take off but end up somewhere wildly off course.

Blueprints are important: how do you draw them in your organisation? Who maps the learning pathways, who creates the syllabus and who makes sure they’re up to date? You see, the problem is that technology advances, knowledge grows, we make mistakes and learn from them, we discover new solutions to old problems, so whilst the world around us changes, sometimes we fail to adapt quickly enough: we fail to update the blueprints that everyone is working off, so we end up producing outdated solutions. We lose our agility, lose our edge.

A lot has changed in the last decade alone: mobile technology revolutionising how we access information, social technology transforming how communities emerge and how we work within and alongside them. Fundamental shifts in our relationship with learning. But how far have we updated the blueprints? Social learning is very under-utilised within most organisations. Mobile learning is in it’s infancy and often heading off course. Attitudes are changing, but we need to be updating our strategy, drawing up new blueprints for everyone to work off: this is more than just writing a social media policy or adopting a BYOD approach to mobile. It’s a fundamental need to address the trials, opportunities and challenges of the Social Age. How are you recruiting people, how are you meeting the needs of GenY, let alone X and the rest?

Are your Leadership, Coaching or Sales Training programmes still stuck in the classroom, and if so, when are you going to bring them into the real world? Abstract classroom learning is fine, but grounding it in the real world, in our everyday reality is better, using social learning methodologies and mobile performance support.

Time for a Spring clean? Time to build a new rocket?

Where’s your library? Questions around sharing and social learning

As well as a museum, children’s playground and sofas, Schiphol airport boasts a library. In the days of Kindles and eBooks, it may sound slightly anachronistic, but this library has actual shelves and actual books that you can sit in an armchair with and actually read. Photography, art, travel, these are no dog eared remnants of the seventies, these are new, beautifully presented coffee table and art museum books that you can digest in comfort with a latte.

Where does your organisation share it’s knowledge? Where’s the library?

I’ve encountered libraries in other odd places too: there’s a window ledge library near my apartment in Amsterdam, just a single space with around forty books and a note, politely asking you to either drop the book back when you’re done or leave a new one in it’s place.

Then there’s the tree library: shelves built around a tree in the open so you can sit around in the glade and read at a festival. And another tree based one where they just provide plastic bags that you put a book in and hang it from a branch, taking one to read yourself. Handing them on.

This is a very sociable learning model and great examples of social learning: surrounding the formal spaces, but not constrained by formal locations or structures, based on generosity, trust, sharing.

There are some moves towards letting you ‘share‘ eBooks, with Kindle for example you can ‘lend‘ a book for up to fourteen days, but it’s just not quite the same.

Just contrast these social learning approaches with organisations views of knowledge, often locking training and learning up in rooms, hiding them away on systems. If an airport can have a library in the main concourse, why not have one in your reception or canteen? Sure, people might steal the odd book or two, but so what? Maybe they’ll read the odd book or two as well. And how about starting a book club to go with it? Hans runs an online reading group in his organisation as a way of sharing ideas around specific texts: it’s not against a syllabus and learning objectives, but it’s certainly driving learning with the business, using challenge and reflection to embed new ideas.

Come to think of it, how about open courses, instead of succession planning, how about self selection succession? Whoever puts the work in gets a shot at it?

I’ve captured some thoughts here behind this post (i’m experimenting with this format), including some practical activities you can try (in orange) and questions in yellow at the end.

How does your organisation share knowledge? Where is your library?

How to design great e-Learning: ask the right questions

It has to be said that i’m a rather amateur gardener, much preferring the ‘BBQ on a summer evening‘ end of the event to the ‘months of digging holes and spreading manure‘ part of the process. On those occasions when shame or enthusiasm beckons, i tend to buy a few plants and stick them into a vacant patch of brown earth, but there is no master plan. The result is, how shall we say, rustic. I call it my ‘nature‘ garden, but my friends recognise it for what it is: overgrown, lacking structure or thought and full of weeds. Good for a party, but unlikely to win any prizes.

My six stage methodology for e-learning design: try asking these three questions for each stage

I spent sunday at the other end of the spectrum at Keukenhof gardens: seven million plants across twenty eight hectares (fifteen tea rooms) and the product of some superb planning. It turns out that they plant the bulbs for the famous Dutch tulips in three layers: the highest ones flower first, then, as they flag, the next ones comes through and, finally, once you chop them off, the last layer appears. This layering trick lets them keep the gardens blooming for eight weeks. It’s that planning, that thinking to keep the experience at it’s very best for the whole duration which bought me back to basics: today, learning methodology and, in particular, some questions that you can ask to keep yourself out of the weeds and keep your learning fresh!

My own learning methodology runs across six steps: context, demonstration, exploration, reflection, assessment and footsteps. When designing a piece of learning, this blueprint lets me structure the content, design the experience, effectively. I’ve written about this before, but my purpose today is simply to give three or so questions that you can ask at each stage: some of yourself as the organisation, some from the learner. Using a methodology for learning design, asking the right questions, doesn’t guarantee beautiful flowers, but it pretty much guarantees that you won’t be dragged down by the weeds. For me, the purpose of the methodology is a sense check: have i covered everything, or have i forgotten to leave space to play? Am i assessing something relevant, or simply asking questions for the sake of it?

If you can answer all of these questions, or if you think the learner will be happy with the answers that they give, then you’re probably home and dry: but if any areas feel thin, or if you think your organisational answers may differ from those of the learner, then it’s time to get out the pruning knife.

For example: ‘will it be worth the time i invest?‘

Most e-learning is way too long, and it’s too long because we convince ourselves that it needs to be, despite the evidence. I don’t spend forty five minutes reading the paper everyday, but i still know what’s going on in the world. I tailor my social learning experience very efficiently, skimming certain trusted sites and engaging with the parts that are relevant. So why do i need forty five minutes to learn about your new product? Chances are that i don’t, it’s just that organisations like to spend a lot of time telling us how important things are and treating us like idiots.

Or how about ‘can i tell this story in my own language?‘

A lot of learning is about changing how we do stuff, not about parroting what i say. For example, if you decide to write an article tonight about learning methodologies, i hope you’ll agree with some of what i say, disagree with other parts (based upon your experience and reading) and bring some new sources in too. Your story may be recognisable as related to mine, but you really need your own language if you truly are going to believe in it. My language works for me, but maybe you need your own flavour. This is true whatever the subject, but does your learning solution allow people the space to create their own vocabulary and practice it?

Learning methodology is a big subject: i don’t want to get further into it today, but i felt this was the time to put something out as a foundation. If you’re interested in this subject, let me know and i’ll expand on any of the individual sections.

Does your organisation have a box of useful stuff?

There’s a battered old tin that lives on a high shelf in the kitchen full of useful stuff. Stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else, but which is too valuable to throw away. Stuff that you don’t use very often, but which when you do need it, you need it in a hurry. Stuff like nutcrackers, a puncture repair kit and superglue. Not things you use everyday, but the first place to search if you can’t find something important. Like the radiator key. Or the spare bulbs for the christmas tree lights.

In the kitchen is a box of useful stuff. Where does your organisation keep it’s useful stuff? Does everyone know?

When organisations look at learning, they often buy people the equivalent of shiny food mixers, professional knife sets and a fancy coffee machine. We invest in programmes and courses that are designed and marketed to effect big changes in skills, in knowledge, in behaviours, but we don’t often give them an old box to keep useful stuff in.

In organisations, we often rely on tribal knowledge, the un-codified wisdom of the group, on informal networks to convey the ‘stuff‘ that lives in the box. It’s not important enough to be taught formally.

Increasingly our personal learning networks are where this stuff can be found: they’re the first place we turn to when we have an odd question, when we need support, when we have a tough nut to crack.

Maybe it’s worth doing a little bit of research to map the different communities and spaces that exist within your organisation, to understand how many of them are formal, how many live in an old box. Do people feel equipped to find what they need? Does everyone know where the box lives?

Where should you invest your time? Taking control of learning

Something i’ve really learnt over the last few years is about time: how it’s stolen, lost, spent or invested, remembered, forgotten or enjoyed. Those of you who are regulars may recall that since Christmas i’ve been playing guitar everyday. I’ve signed up for some online video lessons which i can access ‘on demand‘ and this week i completed my tenth lesson. Ok, so that’s only ten hours of lessons in nearly five months, plus five or ten minutes practice a day, but i’m twice as good a guitarist as i was from the first twenty years of playing. A small but regular investment of time has transformed my performance. But it’s not about finding that small amount of time: it’s about stopping doing whatever was stealing that time before. It’s about choices.

Time is wasted, stolen, slips away. Learning is about building knowledge, but also about taking action. Where do you invest your time?

Most days, the blog is the most important thing i do: the reason being that it gives me a legacy. As time goes by, it forms a huge external resource that i constantly reference and use to reinforce conversations, to track my learning, to develop ideas, to share, to challenge myself. Even on those days that feel wasted, those days that feel unproductive, if i’ve spent twenty minutes reflecting in this space, i feel i’ve learnt something, i feel that there is some tangible result from the day.

Many of the leadership or management programmes that i work on focus on techniques for diary management, on processes or models for organising time better, on ways of influencing others or effecting change more successfully. But so much of it misses the point: it’s about where you spend your time and what you stop doing. Effecting change is easy if you take small bites. Small changes are cumulative. If you want to curate your reputation, you have to do it over time, and reputation is what will empower you to make changes, what will give you influence.

How much of your time is stolen? How much of it is used by other people? What do you learn everyday and how do you share it? Is that time more or less valuable than the time other people use? How different do you feel from this time last year?

Change can be as simple as intention: if you really want something, if you really want to learn, you just need to make small changes everyday. This message is often missing in our learning design: we focus on understanding rather than action, but learning is about action as well.

Understanding what we want, then taking action to achieve it, and recognising that action may be about stopping doing things as well as starting new things. That’s something valuable i’ve learnt.